Highwayman Dick Turpin made travelling a risky business

FOR residents of fashionable and upmarket Blackheath, the barren wilderness which existed there in centuries past would be unrecognisable as their trendy stamping ground.

In fact, Blackheath and the Shooters Hill road, an ancient Roman road, was ideal territory for robbers, criminals and highwaymen.

On the main road from London to Dover, Blackheath, with its woods, caves, hollows and gravel pits, provided superb cover for smugglers hiding their goods, and thieves to lie low during daylight hours.

That most famous of highwaymen, Dick Turpin, was said to have committed some of his dastardly deeds up on Shooters Hill, apprehending fearful travellers on their way home.

Lonely and windswept, many an 18th century traveller must have feared for his life when crossing Blackheath, especially when he saw the gibbet swinging high on Shooters Hill.

The son of a respectable Essex publican, Dick Turpin first came to notoriety in 1735, when a Charlton farmer, Mr Saunders, was robbed by his gang. That October, the Grub Street Journal reported: "We hear for about six weeks past, Blackheath has been so infested by two highwaymen suppos'd to be Rowden and Turpin that 'tis dangerous for travellers to pass."

But Dick Turpin was by no means the first man to practise the "profession of the road".

Claude Du Vall was executed for robbery in 1670, and is known to have been active on the heath. The Golden Farmer, William Davies, was sentenced to death 19 years later.

Newspaper reports of outrages abounded. In 1719, one journalist wrote: "At noon, several horseman and coaches were robbed at the bottom of Shooter's Hill, by two highwaymen, who took very considerable booties from the passengers.

"The said highwaymen have committed a great number of robberies at that place within some weeks past, and use all in a polite manner."

And in September 1752: "Last Thursday afternoon between five and six, a young gentleman was robbed in the Woolwich stage-coach, by two highwaymen ... he desired they would return him one shilling to pay his coach hire, which they refused; but otherwise behaved very complaisantly, shook hands with him and wished him goodnight."

By the beginning of the 1800s, highwaymen were on the wane on Blackheath.

The last recorded attack was in 1877, when two bakers were sentenced to seven years' penal servitude.

Thanks to Greenwich Council Local History Library for their co-operation in the writing of this article.

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